So Mick Jagger, The Beatles and David Bailey were pals.
With each Camera we used a detachable polaroid back for checking ‘the set up’ ...lighting, composition, focus, as "seen through the lens" before we start shooting anything for real.When we were happy with everything in the frame the Polaroid back came off... replaced with a Hasselblad film back… or a film darkslide... or a 10x8 film darkslide... Then we’d shoot the shot. This was a very precise analytic ‘militaristic’ process.
The models dressing room was on stage too so the audience could watch them making up, doing the hair and styling the models, all done by top experts we’d brought out from
Whilst we busied ourselves setting up… Doing basic composition, focus, lighting etc… Two shows a day. 10 Shows. Shooting fashion pictures on the latest Hasselblad with an 80mm or a 150mm… and a 10 x 8 Sinar ‘view’ camera with a 121mm or a 210mm super angalon… it’s best to shoot fashion on longer focal length lenses as it distorts less and slims down the girl… as well as having a shallow depth of field which makes the subject stand out sharp against a soft focus background.
Use of a telephoto lens will reduce perspective distortion of the subject and defocus the background, which is desirable in portrait photography. Wikipedia
We had limitless free film stock and plenty of colour Polaroid to play with.
Colour transparency positives of our work were posted on light boxes out side the auditorium entrance after each days show/shoot.
Everyone could view unedited images as soon as they arrived back from the colour laboratory… so the pictures needed to be good… we made sure they were… that’s what we’d gone over there for …to show ‘the krauts’ London was the birth of cool for the new age of fashion photography …we were competing with ourselves really.
We felt the world was far behind …even ‘the yanks’ …who had been the world leaders… (still were in advertising photography) …This was our time and we knew it. And we were professionally very focused in our laisez faire ‘London’ way.
The Brits are at their best playing gifted amateurs. Antonioni's "Blow Up" Hip Trendy film based on a David Bailey type character... helped make Swinging London and photography everyone's "Obsession de' jour"...
A Beatles soundtrack always booming out as we photographers worked...
And as I was a young rising star they delivered an ice chest full of chilled Lowenbrau to my camera work table every day …good for washing down the odd tab of speed and little pill sized balls of black Afghan hash I’d brought from London... the four 'lads' from Liverpool had quite literally started "turning on" the whole world... I was from Liverpool too... and drink and drugs was a fundamental part of our "Northern Soul" culture.
After the night show we headed for the Red Light district which always had the best Chinese food …and good German Hookers with big tits and legs that went on forever... these often beautiful blonde women in sexy erotic underwear were Germanically efficient at a "you will come now" kind of bringing you off…
they say travel broadens the mind and it did…
The thing I love about YouTube is when I'm writing about a period there is always a film clip portraying the atmosphere of the time.
In this case Helmut Newtons Germanically erotic imaging gives a sense of those red light nights in Cologne...
On one of these all night adventures... between massages... icy plunge pools... icy cold beers and hot steam rooms... more booze... and red lit cheap perfume smelling boudoirs... I met Alan Porter, a Yank in town for the show.
A friend of my boss I think he was... Alan was something I’d never encountered before… He made a living writing about photography... god damn it he knew more about it than I did… and I thought I’d devoured all there was to know about photography… after all it was my job… my life... and he really knew more than me… He edited a magazine called Camera International…
I’d never heard of it before because it was Swiss... probably that's why I'd never heard of it... You know the Swiss... in the words of Orson Welles... as Harry Lime... "in a hundred years of peace the Swiss never invented anything except... the Cookoo Clock" ...and Camera Magazine!
Alan had been brought in to turn it into an international magazine and that’s exactly what he did… I never saw him again after that crazy week in Cologne but actually he changed my life forever. Camera Magazine became my bible, until the day it disappeared without trace… I always knew it was an important piece of work… but it’s only now 20 years later that I begin to realize just how important it actually was and is to me.
Photography may have gone digital but the philosophy of photography as art never changes.
They may have Venus Williams flashing her booty... tennis racquets that can hit a ball at hundreds of miles an hour… but the lines at Wimbledon are still in the same place... the rules too... Techniques and Equipment change but the game remains the same… as with Rugby, Cricket or Tennis or War… It’s the same with Photography.
What made Camera Magazine so special was whilst all the other magazines were like technical data catalogues with a few bad nude pictures thrown in …Camera Magazine was all about Real Art... about the pictures themselves... Image making... The philosophy behind the images… looking into the mind of the man triggering the shutter. It was a forgone conclusion that you understood technique otherwise why become a photographer. The creative philosophy was all. Without a philosophy behind them all the cameras in the world have nothing to say...
Camera Magazine became my bible and I became a star...
The other day I came across some old copies of the publication… not many but enough… I got lost in them again... decided to share them… Over the next few months I’m going to start a review of some of the thoughts and ideas held between those precious old pages… before they disappear forever.
Camera magazine once helped a young photographer to really understand the ‘image making’ process… the creative elements that make up that process.
In the digital age there seems to be more talk about the technical side of photography than it’s cerebral intellectual and philosophical side… that is what Camera Magazine changed for me as a young man and I’m sure it can go on doing this for photographers as long as it still exists… and in this blog an edited review version will always exist.For me this will be a journey back to my roots… back to the future. And thank you Allen Porter… editor of Camera Magazine… back then.
You changed the world mate!
August 1969 Edition.
November 1973 Edition. August 1974 Edition.
In every professionals life there comes a moment when he suddenly knows why?
When I read this it was one of those moments :
‘In our view, the original photographer is one who, by pursuing his aesthetic and narrative project to its ultimate limits, succeeds in drawing us into his own private universe, and, in his own way, touches on the universal. If only each portfolio, just like a novel or a film, while bewitching us with its beauty, could relate a story so powerful that it changes the course of our life.’
Camera International. Editorial Hiver ’87.
I never saw a better definition… carried it with me for years.For the rest of my life...
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